Wireless communications networks are widely deployed to provide various communication services such as voice, video, packet data, messaging, broadcast, and the like. These wireless networks may be multiple-access networks capable of supporting multiple users by sharing the available network resources.
A wireless communications network may include a number of network devices such as access points (APs) that can support communication for a number of wireless stations. A wireless station (STA) may communicate with a network device bidirectionally. For example, in a wireless local area network (WLAN), a STA may communicate with an associated AP via downlink and uplink. The downlink (or forward link) refers to the communication link from the AP to the STA, and the uplink (or reverse link) refers to the communication link from the STA to the AP.
In WLANs, there may be cases in which multiple STAs are in communication with a particular AP. Access to the wireless medium may be controlled through a medium access control (MAC), which may allow different STAs to access a wireless channel according to enhanced distributed channel access (EDCA) rules. Included in the EDCA rules is a transmit opportunity (TXOP) limit, which is a duration of time during which a STA is allowed to continually access the medium without backoff. In some deployments, a wireless network may have four different access priorities according to an access class (AC) of data that is transmitted using the wireless channel, each of which may have a different TXOP limit.
In order to enhance utilization of the wireless network, it would be desirable for different STAs accessing the wireless network to utilize relatively fewer TXOPs with each containing more data for transmission rather than relatively more TXOPs with each containing less data for transmission, while still maintaining quality of service (QoS) criteria for a particular AC of data.